WTF?

Calhoun's Cannons for Oct 17, 2013

Now that the Tea Party Crashers and their spineless Republican wannabe Fanboys have left the trashed building, does somebody want to tell me what the hell that accomplished? It inflicted real pain on actual real people.  Check.  It damaged our economy and cost us a bundle.  Check.  It proved to the world that Americans are a bunch of idiots for electing these fools in the first place?  Check and check.

Anything else?  Right.  Nothing.  Nothing!

But, you must admit, the semantics of this whole deal were awesome!  Real Raven-writing-desk Jabberwocky stuff. While the country teetered on the brink of financial collapse, here's what passed for Republican "dialogue:"

"Will you vote for a clean CR?"

"It's red, about 6" square, with little wheels on it."

"What? Uh, no, I asked you, Will you vote to pass a clean CR?"

"I told you, it's red, about 6" square, with little wheels on it."

"Wait, I'm asking you about the CR.  Will you vote to pass it?"

"I already answered your question. It's red, 6" square, with little wheels on it."

"WTF???" 

Confused?  Well, you shouldn't be.  We've been living in Frank LuntzLand for years, though his malign influence really came to the fore when Obama got elected. Luntz, a Republican pollster/strategist/wordmeister, is the undisputed master of corrupting language in order to deceive the rubes into believing an alternate reality, then voting, often against their best interests, for that false reality.

One example: When the Affordable Care Act was being crafted, one section included paying for an end-of-life-care discussion with your doctor or with end-of-life-care specialists, a consultation that would give patients and their families information about all treatments and options so they would be not only fully informed but be able to make choices best for them.

A needed service, you might think?  If you've faced the death of a loved one, you know well the bewildering choices you have to make, often in haste, and wouldn't it be nice to have that information before need, or at the least, have a trained, informed navigator there to help you understand the often complex options? 

Well, you'd be wrong.  In an eyeblink, in LuntzLand, end-of-life-care-options became "death panels," wherein granny would face a tribunal who would judge whether or not she would live or die. Sarah Palin loved that Luntzism and along with others, including a Republican Senator (Grassley, who knew better) megaphoned it across the land. 

Yes, it was a lie, but lies are what Luntz gets paid handsomely to produce.   So, that much needed, really helpful section of the ACA was yanked out as a result of the hysteria that particular LuntzLie produced, and as a result real patients and their families were left to suffer on their own while facing an often bewildering system with no help.

And when confronted with this lie, here was the Republican response:

"It's red, about 6" square, with little wheels on it."

During these recent ridiculous government-shutdown temper tantrums, led by Lee Atwater's spawn, those Neo-Confederate Tea Party Crashers and their wannabe Fanboy followers, we've heard a constant call for "negotiations," and "dialogue" and "frank discussions." Ah, yes, "frank discussions," surely a necessity IF we presume that we actually want the government to function properly.

But in order to have a properly functioning government, we have to leave LuntzLand, because it's  impossible to have a "frank discussion" or "negotiate" or fix anything when language itself has been corrupted into deliberately dishonest Jabberwocky. In the real world, a clean CR is a clean CR.  It isn't red, it isn't 6" square and it doesn't have little wheels on it.